The advent of computing devices, such as desktop computers, laptop computers, and personal digital assistants, along with numerous software applications for such devices, has led to an increasing usage of computing devices to collect data (or information). Furthermore, the advent of various computing networks, such as local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN), and the Internet, have further influenced the increasing usage of computing devices to collect data. Through the use of such software applications and computing networks, computing devices can be used to collect data for purposes ranging from important research projects (e.g., business or government related matters) to the leisurely review of topics of interest (e.g., hobbies, recreation, shopping, etc.).
Existing approaches for collecting data with computing devices typically allow a user to copy data from one application to another, which is often described as “copying” and “pasting” the data. For example, a laptop computer user conducting research may copy data from a web-browser application connected to the Internet and past the data to a note-taking/managing application to save it for further review. However, existing approaches for collecting data in this manner typically do not provide a practical means to refer back to the source of the data. For instance, in the case of the previous example, the laptop computer user may later need to refer back to the web-site from which the data was copied. But, the information needed for such reference is typically not available to the user unless it was manually recorded or a new search for the web-site is subsequently conducted.
In other instances, a user may need other reference information related to data that was collected using a computing device, such as the date and/or time the data was collected, the author of the data, the last editor of the data, the location of the data in a document, the user who collected the data, etc. Existing approaches typically do not provide such additional reference information either when data is collected with computing devices. As a result, a user may again have to resort to manually recording such reference information or conducting a subsequent review of a data source to obtain such reference information. Thus, collecting and researching data with computing devices using existing approaches can be impractically time and resource consuming.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need in the art for providing reference information related to data when it is collected with computing devices. Such reference information may include, but is not limited to, one or more of: the source of the data, the date and/or time the data was collected, the author of the data, the last editor of the data, the location of the data in a document, the user who collected the data, etc.